NYT Nip Slip Photog Says It Was an ‘Unplanned Moment’

Yahoo columnist Virginia Hefferman tweeted that she likes the photo. Forbes columnist Clare O’Connor re-tweeted her agreement. What do you think of this morning’s hot-button New York Times front page?

The New York Times are no dummies. They knew today would be a slow news day, and so – voila! The above image has triggered coverage not just here but also over at Business Insider and New York magazine:

The above-the-fold front-page photo, by Israeli photographer Rina Castelnuovo, accompanies a story about Israeli women grappling with one of the world’s highest rates of breast cancer. It shows a woman’s torso replete with a Star of David tattoo, a lumpectomy scar, and, yes, a bit of areola…

Castelnuovo tells Daily Intelligencer that she didn’t set out to be provocative. “It was an unplanned moment,” she told us in an e-mail. “I was taking the young woman’s portrait and we were chatting about her cancer and the scars.” The inclusion of the areola, she said, was “not intentional.”

We’re going to side with Castelnuovo, Hefferman and O’Connor rather than a scandalized Matt Drudge. We thank the NYT for allowing us to pretend when we woke up this morning that we were somewhere in continental Europe.